The Sol Phryne was a ferry

Ferry

A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...

 of Sol Maritime Services Ltd. She was bought by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and sunk on 16 February 1988.

The Sol Phryne was built in Japan in 1947 as Taisetsu Maru.

From 1967 to 1974, she was owned by Efthymiades Line and used for regular ferry duties between Greek islands as Eolis. In 1974, she was purchased by Sol Maritime Services Ltd., renamed Sol Phryne and was then used in the Middle East, notably evacuating Palestinian guerrillas from Beirut

Beirut

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...

 in 1982. She was sunk during an attempt to ferry Palestinian deportees to Haifa

Haifa

Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

Voyage

The 6,151-ton Sol Phryne was purchased in some secrecy by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and renamed Al Awda ("the Return"). The PLO planned to symbolically ferry 135 Palestinian deportees and, if they accepted the short notice invitation, hundreds of journalists and other observers, to the port of Haifa

Haifa

Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

 for a "journey of return" echoing the journey of the Exodus

Exodus (ship)

Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants, that left France on July 11, 1947, with the intent of taking its passengers to the British mandate for Palestine. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivor refugees, who had no legal immigration certificates to Palestine...

.

Israeli Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....

 stated that Israel would oppose the voyage "in whatever ways we find, while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir

' is a former Israeli politician, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, in 1983–84 and 1986–92.-Biography:Icchak Jeziernicky was born in Ruzhany , Russian Empire . He studied at a Hebrew High School in Białystok, Poland. As a youth he joined Betar, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement...

 labeled the journey "a declaration of war".

A different, chartered ship had been scheduled to sail from Piraeus

Piraeus

Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....

 on 9 February, but the departure was postponed several times because Greek ship owners feared commercial retaliations from Israel if their vessel was used. With this difficulty chartering a ship, on 13th Feb 1988 the PLO purchased the aging Sol Phryne in Limassol

Limassol

Limassol is the second-largest city in Cyprus, with a population of 228,000 . It is the largest city in geographical size, and the biggest municipality on the island. The city is located on Akrotiri Bay, on the island's southern coast and it is the capital of Limassol District.Limassol is the...

, Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

 at auction for $600,000. By the time of the sinking the crew of the ship had not been informed of the new owners.

On 15 February, three high-ranking military officials of the PLO were assassinated in Limassol by a remote-controlled bomb planted on their car.

18 hours later, on the night of the 15th February, a limpet mine

Limpet mine

A limpet mine is a type of naval mine attached to a target by magnets; they are so named because of their superficial similarity to the limpet, a type of mollusk....

 attached to the hull exploded and holed a fuel tank of the Sol Phryne, flooding it and causing the ship to list. No casualties were reported but this ended the attempt. Yassar Arafat alleged that this was done by Israeli frogmen but did not provide any evidence to support his claim, The Sol Phryne was raised and transferred to Bijela

Bijela

Bijela is a coastal town within the municipality of Herceg Novi, Montenegro. It is located north of Herceg Novi, by the Verige strait of the Kotor Bay...

, in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

.
As Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 reported, "Israel officially denied complicity in the car bombing but hardly bothered to conceal its role in disabling the ferry" and suspicions of Israeli involvement were further reinforced when Israeli Transport Minister Chaim Corfu threatened that, if a further attempt was made by the PLO, "its fate will be the same". Fuad al-Bitar, Athens representative of the PLO told an Athens news conference that "it is clear that the only one interested" in the sabotage was Israel. In July 2008, Haaretz

Haaretz

Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...

 referred to this attack, without admitting Israeli responsibility, in the context of the threatened but ultimately successful "Free Gaza" breaking of Israel's siege of Gaza.

Three claims of responsibility were made, two of them being:

• an anonymous caller, claiming to be from the Palestine Salvation Front because "rejected many times Yasir Arafat's idea to arrange this propaganda trip" - denied by Abdul Hadi al-Nahhad for the Damascus-based group and by the PLO.
• a telephone call received by the Associated Press
  Associated Press
  The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
  
   claimed the attack for the Jewish Defence League

External links

• U.S. leftists confirm plans to sail to Gaza to break siege, Haaretz
  Haaretz
  Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
  
  
• S/S Taisetsu Maru (Swedish)